Google Lucky Clickers are at risk

The "I'm feeling lucky" feature is being used by junk mailers and phishers to avoid being caught by anti-spam products according to Message Labs.

Security Firm Messagelabs said, in its latest intelligence report, that a new technique, called Search Engine Spamming, has been taking users' inboxes by storm.

One of every six spam emails MessageLabs filtered in January belonged to this category and as The Register writes, the fact that the structure of the URL is not traditional, the spam email evades detection.

To make things worst, the emails are often sent using different variations of Google's search engine URL like Google.mu or Google.fr.

"Search engine spam is a technique that allows the spammer to include a link constructed from a search engine query in an e-mail message," writes Messagelabs in its January report.

"When followed, the link will resolve in the spammer's forged Web site. This means that the spammers can send messages without directly mentioning the spam Web site, which makes it difficult for traditional anti-spam products to detect the malicious link."

Messagelabs also found out that the number of targeted phishing attacks is surging, with more than 4000 targeted attacks recorded in every day of November 2007.